Resuscitating Personal Weblog

I'm going to give a "general musings" blog another shot and am resuscitating "1/4 Empty." As you can see, it has been 2.75 years since I tried this. At the time, I managed a grand total of two posts within one week, and that was it.

Why try again? Life-wise, 2008 was a very good year for restoring some semblance of work-life balance:

• Not as much overtime since springtime
• Spent more time with Kathleen
  
• Got back to exercising via starting to row with Kathleen
  
• Enjoyed being outside and on the water via rowing and kayaking
• Rekindled interest in birding, hydrology, and limnology
  

What didn't get done?

• No further work on our landscaping. Although Kathleen did uproot a bunch of bushes that had become overgrown.
• No real improvement in a self-organization system. Several attempts that produced some fruit, but weren't sustained.
• In spite of several week-long "staycations," very little career-related self-study investigations got off the ground
  

And, career wise, the Wells Fargo acquisition of my employer, Wachovia, is both presenting and forcing a re-assessment of my current trajectory within information technology, really software development. First Union, then Wachovia, have been fine places to do IT - each has had it's own strengths and weaknesses. Business practices had rather greater degrees of strength and weakness. A friend and coworker has posted rather stronger opinions. Early indications are that Wells may be a "better" spot for the software segments of IT.

So, as 2009 begins, what to focus on?

1. non-development aspects of application management? monitoring, SLA's, etc
2. funding models for teams?
3. people management?
4. further blah-blah-blah regarding SOA (besides just doing it)?
   
5. architecture?